Letter: Critical perspective of Italy's left

Sir: Your leading article 'Better old reds than neo-Fascists' (7 December) should be complimented for avoiding the misleading stereotype implied in its headline. As you rightly observe, the Italian Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) is a different creature from the country's former Communist Party (PCI). What a pity then that your reporters and sub-editors continue to refer to it by the epithets 'former Communist' or 'ex-Communist'.

Perhaps these labels explain your continuing inability to grasp both the immediate content and the deeper portent of the changes set in train by the formation of the PDS. Describing the latter as a 'social democratic-style party' may help British readers appreciate the fact of its mutation but does not accurately describe the nature of it. The real change is considerably more radical.

The omission of terms such as 'social', 'socialist', 'labour' or 'workers' from the new party's name was not a matter of tactical convenience, but was based upon a new perspective on politics. This hypothesised that the end of the Cold War, and of nation-state sovereignty, had consigned the entire socialist tradition to history.

The denomination 'Democratic Party of the Left' derives from the fact that the party's role is now perceived in terms of the functional requirements of an effective democratic system, and not in terms of a strategy for transition from a capitalist social order to a socialist one. In other words, the left (including those forces that derive from historic socialism) is now attributed a critical function within democracy: that of keeping democracy healthy by offering alternative government based on an expansion of its application to previously marginalised sections of society.

This explains why the PDS has been the force behind institutional reform in Italy, and why it has been able to build broad-based alliances for government, while the 'new' forces on the right have been content to ride the tide of anti-centrist protest. The success of this strategy, and the fact that Italy is already well down the road to a post-Cold War political system should make it the subject of greater attention from reformers in Britain. Not only would aspirant ministers in the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties do well to heed the tactical benefits of such a strategy, but Democratic Conservatives might consider the fate of an Italian ruling elite that once sought to deprive its opposition of any legitimate role in the government of society.

Yours faithfully,

DAVID M. FISHER

Department of Politics

University of Bristol

Bristol